THEY MET in Palm Springs after he fled the city to escape the L.A. riots.

Jack Merrick is fond of saying that Rodney King brought he and his wife Margot—”the love of my life”—together.

“It was under the duress of the curfew imposed after the L.A. riots that I had the bright idea to head to Palm Springs with some buddies,” he recalls. “Within three hours we were drinking piña coladas at the Pompeii nightclub and I was thinking I was the smartest guy in the world.”

At the end of the evening, in walked a gaggle of females celebrating a bachelorette party, with Margot as the ringleader.

“The truth is we were both in relationships at the time, plus she lived in Rancho Cucamongo, which was geographically undesirable,” said Jack, “which is why I often refer to it as the one-night-stand that never happened.”

However, Margot grabbed his business card and a year later “she called out of the blue and said she was going to Japan for business and did I know anyone who lived there.”

Sparks flew when the pair met at Steve Kramer’s law office in the Miracle Mile. “It was like the boomerang of love,” remembers Jack. “I said ‘you’re so beautiful, please go out with me tonight.'”

The rest, as they say, is history. The Merricks, who recently moved to Malibu Canyon after living 20 years in the Hancock Park area, have been married 18 years. They have three kids: James, Jackson and Genevieve, and a business called Good Company Senior Care in the Miracle Mile.

Whirlwind romance leads to long-time love

It took Diane and Vic Hawley a little over two months to realize they wanted to be together forever.

TIMING was right for them.

The pair were grad students at a two-year program at Harvard Business School who lived in the same apartment building and had mutual friends. Somehow, though, their paths never crossed.

Until one day…

“We had just come back from the holidays and were out with separate groups of friends,” recalls Diane. “My group of three girls happened to walk into a cute little haunt in Cambridge just as he was walking out with his friends.”

They all decided to meet the following week, and that night Vic asked her out for dinner and a movie.

Things took off quickly from there, which meant it was a big deal when Diane received job offers in London, San Francisco, Austin and L.A. “I knew he was going back to L.A., so I said to him “I really want to come to L.A., but I need to know what role I’ll play in your life.'”

Vic gave it some thought, and the next day he looked at Diane and said “I want you to be Mrs. Hawley someday.”

“Wow! I wasn’t looking for that,” Diane recalled with a laugh.

They moved to L.A. in June, Vic proposed over Christmas, and the couple will celebrate their 30th anniversary next year. “You just don’t know what makes the time so right,” said Diane.” But we feel really, really lucky.”

His dry cleaner played cupid

BARBARA and Bob Terry met in San Francisco.

Bob Terry’s dry cleaner played cupid when Terry was a bachelor living in San Francisco. The owner continually fixed Bob up with her single lady customers, including one gal who brought in a wedding dress for storage.

It turned out that her wedding had been called off, so the dry cleaner suggested that Bob should call her.

Bob said he had been happy as a bachelor, and it took him a year of dating before he was sure he wanted to be married. “I also wanted to be sure that Barbara felt the same way.”

The couple, residents of Mansfield Ave., are celebrating 15 years of marriage with their son Nicholas, 12.